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Officer's death brings blue mourning to MIT, nation

By Katie Lannan, klannan@lowellsun.com

Updated:
04/25/2013 07:20:08 AM EDT

Robert Rogers, center, puts his hand on his stepbrother, Andrew Collier, after delivering the eulogy at a memorial service for slain Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer Sean Collier, at MIT in Cambridge Wednesday. Sean Collier was fatally shot on campus Thursday, allegedly by the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. AP Photos

CAMBRIDGE -- Slain Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Officer Sean Collier was the embodiment of the spirit and resilience that carried the state through the trying days after last week's Boston Marathon bombings, speakers at his memorial service said Wednesday.

Collier, 26, a Wilmington native and Somerville resident, was honored at a service on MIT's Briggs Field, attended by thousands of students and law-enforcement officers from across the state and country. Speakers, including Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and members of the Collier family and MIT administration, remembered him as a dedicated officer, a willing friend and an example of the strength that they said could can ultimately defeat terrorism.

Police officers salute during the memorial service for fallen Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus officer Sean Collier at MIT Wednesday.

"The world knows that Officer Collier was killed in the line of duty, but he had a deep, beautiful sense of what this duty involved," MIT President L. Rafael Reif. "He made countless friends on our campus, and as we're learning from their tributes, Officer Collier did not just have a job at MIT, he had a life at MIT."

Clad red and gray MIT gear as well as somber black, students filled in the rows of folding chairs covering the athletic field, paying tribute to the man who had died protecting them, and in the 15 months before that, become a friend by joining their clubs, and taking on their interests and offering support.

Collier was shot to death while in his police cruiser last Thursday night, allegedly by the men suspected of planting the bombs near the marathon finish line.

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MIT Police Chief John DiFava said at the service he had last seen Collier about an hour before the shooting, and had asked him what he was doing.

"Just making sure everybody's behaving, sir," Collier responded.

Collier joined the MIT Police Department in January 2012, after paying his own way through the police academy as a self-sponsor, with no guarantee of employment at the other end.

He not only looked out for the campus but became a part of it, Reif said, bonding with students and learning to love what they loved, from swing dancing to hiking and camping.

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at the memorial service for slain MIT Officer Sean Collier, called his killers "two twisted, perverted, cowardly knock-off jihadis." At right is singer-songwriter James Taylor, who performed at the service.

Reif said Collier, in full uniform, would join members of the MIT Outing Club in preparing for hikes by running up the 21 flights of stairs in the school's Green Building.

"On Saturday night, the windows of that same tower that's right behind all of you were illuminated in the pattern of a black ribbon, in his memory," Reif said.

Additional tributes to Collier sprouted up around the MIT campus, with a police badge added to a statue in front of the student center and a memorial of flowers, candles and posters on the site where he was killed.

During the service, Biden told the Collier family that he hoped seeing the turnout that afternoon and hearing the stories of the lives Sean had touched would bring them some solace.

A Revere, Mass., police captain holds his cap while entering a memorial service for fallen Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier in Cambridge Wednesday. Law-enforcement officers from across the nation and beyond to pay tribute to the young officer.
ap photo

The vice president also railed against Collier's suspected killers, whom he called "two twisted, perverted, cowardly knock-off jihadis."

He said the way for the country to defeat terrorism is by refusing to give in to fear or to compromise its values.

"You challenge orthodoxy as they try to impose it," Biden told the students of MIT. "You push the envelope. You know that no change can come without jettisoning a part of the past. You're the cutting-edge of science and technology. You make no distinction between the competence of males and females. You are their worst nightmare."

Sen. Warren said that true strength can only come from unity, cooperation and a commitment to serving -- a belief she said Collier must have realized almost instinctually.

A photograph of fallen MIT police officer Sean Collier is attached to a cross at a makeshift memorial on the campus in Cambridge Wednesday. AP Photos

That spirit of strength through service was something Collier brought to his work every day, Warren said, and something displayed by the first responders and hospital workers in the days after the marathon attack.

"It is that same spirit we saw in a city locked down by the terror of a few, but lifted up by the courage of many," she said. "It is that same spirit we see here today, in the thousands of men and women from law enforcement from all across the country who have come to mourn, who have come to celebrate, who have come to honor one of their finest."

DiFava, the MIT police chief, said that while there are many reasons to enter the field of law enforcement, Collier was one of the few for whom public safety was a true calling. According to DiFava, Collier's mother said in a private funeral this week that her son had wanted to be a police officer since he was 7 years old.

He recalled a story told at the funeral of a Collier family dinner in a pizza place, when a young Collier was concerned about a woman nearby eating alone and encouraged his mother to go help.

"He was the same person in uniform as when he wasn't wearing the uniform," DiFava said. "His caring and compassion was genuine."

Rob Rogers, Collier's brother, said Collier had taught him that a smile to a stranger, a simple hello or an outreached hand could make a difference.

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